PARIS — Maison Rochas’ fashion and beauty businesses will be united under one roof at Interparfums SA.
The company said Wednesday that the Rochas fashion ready-to-wear line — including all of its marketing, communications and licensing activities — is to return to and be totally managed by Interparfums.
Over the past two years, the business was run and produced by HIM Co SpA — High Italian Manufacturing, the company previously known as Onward Luxury Group — based in Bergamo, Italy.
Since 2021, HIMCO has overseen Rochas fashion’s development, formerly under creative director Charles de Vilmorin, who left the label in April after a two-year tenure.
HIMCO is to continue to produce Rochas fashion as Interparfums steers the brand into the future, the company said in a statement.
Rochas’ creative studio will design the brand’s spring 2024 collection, which is due to be shown during Paris Fashion Week in September.
De Vilmorin, known for his colorful paintings tinged with darkness, exited the business on March 31 following the end of his contract with Interparfums.
The designer made his runway debut for Rochas in September 2021 with a disruptive collection blending his signature swirly sketches with a club-kid spirit. Subsequent collections were closer to the house’s heritage, but the designer struggled to hit his stride at Rochas, which lacks a clear set of codes.
Prior to de Vilmorin’s appointment, Rochas had been without a head designer since parting ways with Alessandro Dell’Acqua, who showed his last collection for the label in February 2020. During his six-year tenure the Italian designer updated the brand’s couture heritage with his signature mix of glamorous embellishment and graphic tailoring.
Interparfums bought the Rochas fashion and fragrance business from Procter & Gamble Co. in 2015 for $108 million.
The deal marked a first step into fashion for the Paris-based subsidiary of Interparfums Inc. of New York, whose stable of licensed fragrance brands includes Montblanc, Boucheron, Jimmy Choo and Van Cleef & Arpels. The company also owns Lanvin’s perfume and cosmetics business.
Interparfums, which has no fashion holding other than Rochas, joins a growing number of multinationals taking a one-for-all approach to their brands’ fashion and beauty businesses to help create cohesiveness and synergies, as well as boost business. Puig in late June revealed it had synced up both the fashion and beauty activities for its Rabanne label, for instance.
It is rare for pure beauty players to go it alone with fashion, since the two businesses are very different and often difficult to juggle simultaneously. But it’s not impossible.
L’Oréal, for example, is now running the Mugler fashion and beauty business, after acquiring them from Groupe Clarins in March 2020.